For each of the past 10 years, the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning has issued a report on the status of California's teaching force based on research conducted by SRI International. The Center provides practical information to help policymakers and education leaders understand the challenges they face is provided. Context, clarity…

The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) is an independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan, and nongovernmental organization that develops professional standards for early childhood, elementary, and secondary school teaching. National Board Certification signifies that a teacher or school counselor is accomplished, having met…

The importance of consultation content and rehabilitation counselor educators' proficiency in teaching consultation content were explored. In addition, this study addressed whether educators' perceptions of importance differed according to demographic characteristics. Faculty members from National Council on Rehabilitation Education (NCRE)…

The study is to examine if preservice teachers improve their social studies teaching and learning when they follow a structured and guided methods course based on the four-step social studies teaching cycle. The four steps are 1) preinstructional exploration, 2) assessment development, 3) instructional development, and 4) reflective extension. The…

This paper examines Slovenian physical education (PE) teachers' (n = 85) estimations of their own actual and desired professional competencies with the aim of diagnosing the main needs of practising PE teachers and resolving them within a revised Slovenian Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) curricula and through continued professional…

An alliance of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the Birmingham City Schools, the National Urban Alliance, and the College Board is strengthening urban teacher preparation through TRUST--Training and Retaining Urban Student Teachers. At the heart of this effort is an Urban Teacher Enhancement Program that supports teachers in building…

This article takes the form of a letter to the 44th president of the United States, urging the president to pursue an aggressive agenda to improve teacher quality. The authors assert that because teacher quality is the single most important factor shown to impact student outcomes, the next administration must dedicate resources to human capital…

Six suggestions for improving education in the country are offered. The case is made first that unless children's health care is improved, educational achievement among the poor will not improve. The second point is that poverty limits school achievement as well. Without work on these two issues, neither the nation nor the nation's schools will be…

This article chronicles the journey of a student teaching supervisor as she worked with one of her student teachers. Early in their relationship, the supervisor's assessment of the student teacher's dispositions for teaching triggered concern. In this self-study, the supervisor was guided by Nel Noddings' (2003) phenomenological description of…

This article investigates the value of the term "highly qualified" as it relates to teachers of students with visual impairments. Routes to certification of teachers of students with visual impairments in the United States are not uniform and may not always reflect high-quality teacher preparation. A rationale for more stringent national…

To provide highly qualified teachers and continue the development of their classroom practices, first-rate professional development is needed. E-learning modules were created to provide quality professional development to in-service teachers, enhance instruction without time constraints, and offer a common knowledge base of instructional…

With the current pressures on teachers to increase academic achievement for all students, high-quality teacher training is more important than ever. Elementary teachers are faced with high expectations for their students to achieve literacy proficiency, and these expectations became law with the No Child Left Behind Act. With or without this…

In many cases advanced instructional products, such as computer-based training, e-learning programs, simulations, and simulators are not designed by experienced instructional designers, but by novices: subject matter experts, teachers, instructors, or inexperienced designers. The literature indicates that these novices do not always have the…

These collected papers are a record of the proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia entitled, "Shaping the Future of Mathematics Education." The conference is held in Fremantle, as was the previous conference a decade earlier. Keynote speakers are discussing issues that are emerging more…

Low student learning is a common finding in much of the developing world. This paper uses a relatively unique dataset of five semiannual rounds of standardized test data to characterize and explain the short-term changes in student learning. The data are collected as part of the quality assurance system for a public-private partnership program…